IMR Press / FBL / Volume 14 / Issue 9 / DOI: 10.2741/3445

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
Microbial diversity in the human intestine and novel insights from metagenomics
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1 Department of Genetics, Biology of Microorganisms, Anthropology and Evolution, University of Parma, Italy
2 Unilever Food and Health Research Institute (UFHRI), University College Cork, Western Road, Cork, Ireland
3 Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre and Department of Microbiology, University College Cork, Western Road, Cork, Ireland
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2009, 14(9), 3214–3221; https://doi.org/10.2741/3445
Published: 1 January 2009
Abstract

Bacterial communities reside in very different ecological niches on and within the human host, such as those associated with the alimentary tract. The human gastrointestinal tract is populated with as many as 100 trillion bacterial cells, whose collective genome likely reflects the co-evolution between the microbial community and its host. Recent progress has highlighted the intriguing diversity of these bacterial populations and their important contributions to human physiology. Thus, a thorough understanding of the autochthonous component of the intestinal microbiota is expected to provide crucial information not only on how to develop therapies for various gastrointestinal diseases but also on how to choose the next generation of probiotic bacteria as part of novel functional foods. Recently, novel culture-independent approaches such as metagenomics-based techniques were shown to be crucially important for the exploration of the biodiversity of the human intestinal microbiota.

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